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It was mid-afternoon by the time they climbed the stairs to Mark’s apartment, but Oliver had been traveling for ages and he was so exhausted he’d become pretty loopy. Mark had spent the entire car ride from the airport suppressing a grin as Oliver swung between judging Mark’s driving, ranting about his nightmarish trip, talking excitedly about what foods he wanted to get while he was in town, and running commentary on the people they drove past.
Mark hung their coats as they entered the apartment. “Okay, buddy, let’s get you settled. The couch is ready to go, but I’m wondering if you want to nap on my bed so you can have a darker and quieter room–”
“NAP?!” Oliver exclaimed, far too loudly. And then, to Mark’s amazement, he dissolved into giggles. Oliver Ritz, preeminent biochemist and powerful alchemist, was doubled-over, hands-on-his-knees, back-of-his-neck-getting-pink giggling.
“Um, yes, nap. Oliver, you’ve been awake for… a long time. Like almost two days. And that’s just with travel, I don’t think you were getting much sleep even before your train to a plane to a shuttle to another plane to a blah blah blah that you just told me so much about. Plus the time zones aren’t working in your favor, it’s probably the middle of the night for your internal clock.”
“Time zones, schmime zones!” Oliver shouted, now standing upright. He tossed his duffle toward the couch and then promptly tripped over it, tumbling all the way to the floor.
“Yeah, you seriously need sleep. Come here,” Mark said, extending his hand to help Oliver up. Oliver rolled onto his back, grabbed Mark’s hand, and promptly pulled him down to turn floor. Mark landed unceremoniously across Oliver’s middle. Mark felt his face flush extremely unhelpfully as he tried to catch his breath.
“Byron, we can’t keep meeting like this!” Oliver said in mock scandal.
Mark could feel the heat radiating off his face; he just prayed that Oliver wouldn’t notice. He didn’t seem to. He was tapping at Mark’s elbow insistently, giggling again.
“Get it? Do you get it?” he was saying.
“What?” Mark was focusing too hard on inhaling and exhaling to understand this most recent wave of giggles.
“This is just like the first time we met! Well, not exactly the same, since you tackled me the first time, and this time you were trying to help me up. I suppose in that way it’s just the opposite. But, but still, it’s the same because we ended up just like this!”
Mark must have repressed that memory, but yup, that was indeed how their first meeting had gone down. He exhaled forcefully, making his hair flutter over his forehead. Another bout of giggles overtook Oliver. Mark could feel Oliver’s chest shaking from it. He really needed to extract himself from this. Why couldn’t he move his arms? Oh, because Oliver was hanging on to them, and he was pointing at Mark’s hair, his fingertip inches from Mark’s nose, and then he was touching Mark’s hair.
All Mark’s breath left his body. He was going to pass out and leave sleep-deprived Oliver alone unsupervised on his living room floor, while still on top of him! Nope! He had to get some distance. Oliver was definitely saying words, presumably about Mark’s hair, but Mark was not processing them. Eventually he mustered the strength to push Oliver’s arm away and sit up beside Oliver.
Apparently Oliver had moved onto other topics, because he was now flopping around, struggling to get his phone out of his back packet and saying, “I know you have speakers, go get them!”
Mark shook his head and tuned in more closely to what Oliver was saying. “Speakers? Seriously, Oliver, I think you should lie down, just for a few hours. If you don’t fall asleep then we can put on a TV show or something.”
“No! No, no, no, no, no, Byron, I have to stay awake! This is the trick!” Oliver was grinning intensely, his eyes glinting. “I can’t go to sleep now or I’ll be up all night! It’s only 3:30 here! I have to just go by the local time. So go get your damn speakers!”
Oliver’s giggles were gone and he had a very determined look on his face so Mark relented. “Okay, okay, I’ll be right back.” He got his speaker and two seltzers (after triple checking they had no caffeine) from the kitchen. He was looking for a gentle playlist on his phone when Oliver grabbed the speaker out of his hand and started examining it.
“Byron, where is the cable? How do you connect these damn things? Where do you plug it in?” he was grumbling.
“It’s Bluetooth, Ol. Just let me do it,” Mark laughed, gently taking the speaker back and getting Oliver’s phone from the table. Oliver plopped on the couch and pouted. Mark turned away, because he really didn’t need to see that, and waited for the speaker to chirp.
“What does that mean? Is it ready?” Oliver said from directly behind Mark, making Mark jump and turn back around. “Well? Is it ready? Give me my phone!”
Mark laughed, handing Oliver his phone, and watched him pull up Elton John - which was not at all surprising - and select Honky Cat - which would not have been Mark’s first guess. The room then filled with plucky piano notes Mark knew well. They were the only familiar thing about the scene before him, though. Oliver… Oliver was… dancing. He was dancing! In front of Mark! Mark did not dare to laugh. He didn’t make any sound at all. He had never seen Oliver looking like this… He usually kept his brow furrowed and his mouth schooled into a frown. He kept his shoulders tense and was always moments away from an exasperated sigh. He talked with his hands but they were usually clipped, impatient movements. Right now, Oliver was moving gracefully, in soft curving lines instead of jagged angles.
Mark was afraid Oliver had forgotten he was there and that he might startle him if he so much as breathed, when suddenly Oliver grabbed Mark’s wrist. So much for graceful, Mark thought bewilderedly, as his face smashed into Oliver’s chest. He knew he was blushing again. He had enough wherewithal to notice that he both wanted to run away and to lean further in, but not enough time to process what that was about, before he was suddenly forced backward and spun around, Oliver now belting the chorus at the top of his lungs.
Oliver had both of Mark’s hands in his, with his eyes closed and his face as open as Mark had ever seen it. Mark tried to keep up with the dancing but he mostly just swayed and let Oliver swing their arms around, still singing loudly through the second verse and chorus. Finally the harmonica wiggled its way into Mark’s bones and he found himself dancing as freely as Oliver.
It was like time was suspended around them. Mark could have lived in this moment forever. He found himself truly laughing, purely joyful in a way that felt rare and precious.
Oliver’s eyes jumped open as the full chorus came back around. He dropped Mark’s hands and started waving his own around in the air. “Wouldn’t you know, Sir Elton,” Oliver started shouting, interrupting himself with more giggles.
He caught sight of Mark, like he’d forgotten about the man he’d pulled into dancing with him just minutes earlier, and his excited hand-waving started up again before morphing into pawing at Mark’s shoulders. “Mark, I can totally do that!” Mark wasn’t following but he was swept up in Oliver’s enthusiasm. He wished for a moment that Caleb was nearby, so he could ride these feelings with Oliver. “I could find gold in a silver mine! Well, no, I would make gold from the silver! I could do that!” His eyes were wide and distractingly sincere, and Mark felt himself getting lost in the shades of brown, discovering flecks of gold nestled here and there, but after a moment, Mark caught up to what he was saying and started nodding.
“Guess it’s not quite the metaphor he was going for then,” Mark replied, grinning despite the sudden increase in his heart rate.
“Well, that part’s not. But the whiskey to wine part does it.”
“You mean wine to whiskey?”
“That’s what I said,” Oliver scowled.
Mark arched an eyebrow at him. “No, you said it backwards.”
“No, I didn’t, Byron. I know what I said.”
Mark just stared at him, grinning even more broadly. He didn’t care, really. He usually gave Oliver a hard time, but Oliver was so sleep-deprived and so excited about this song that Mark didn’t want to spoil the moment. “So you don’t think you could transmute wine into whiskey?”
Oliver didn’t answer right away. His gaze was lowered and Mark found himself trying to glimpse the gold flecks, but he couldn’t see them.
“Hey Byron?” The air had stilled and Oliver’s face looked serious now.
“Yeah?”
“I know we don’t… you know… I’m not saying you have to tell me anything, but I just want you to know that you can.”
“Thanks, Oliver, I know.”
“I’m not done.” Mark glanced at him long enough to find the flecks under a once-more furrowed brow, and then down to his own fidgeting hands. The song was blaring on, all staccato piano and swanky horns. It sounded too loud now. “I owe you an apology.” Mark started to interrupt him, but Oliver barreled through. “I realized on one of the flights. It’s really shitty of me to call you when I’m drunk, since you’re… you’re not… you’re trying…”
“It’s okay, Oliver.”
“No, it’s not! I - It’s - It’s really, really not and I should have realized sooner. I just… I get…” Oliver started pacing and rubbed his hand over his face, setting his glasses askew and not bothering to fix them. Mark watched him carefully. They were in murky territory. Mark felt his anxiety but wasn’t sure what part of this day, of the past ten minutes, was contributing the most. He had been such a bundle of nerves before getting Oliver today. All week he’d been thinking about this visit nonstop. This was certainly not what he’d envisioned. Maybe that was okay? It would have to be okay. They’d had awkward conversations and even arguments before… but never in person.
Oliver collapsed on the couch. Mark cautiously reached over to the speaker and lowered the volume to zero. He realized once the silence settled in that he was sitting on the floor next to the coffee table, Oliver just an arms length away on the couch.
“I get lonely,” Oliver continued, his face fully buried in his hands now. Mark blinked a few times. He refocused on Oliver, here in front of him, not calling from eight time zones away. “I get scared. I get tired for no reason and I just think about… things I don’t want to remember. But I can manage it, I’m dealing with it, it’s fine. But still, it’s easier with… you. You understand.”
Mark nodded sourly at that. He sure fucking did.
“And I get lonely so I call you when I shouldn’t and–”
“Can I…?” Mark hadn’t meant to interrupt. “Sorry, you can finish. I just want you to know everything you just said is okay. And that… and that I really like when you call me.”
“No, I – what?”
“Oliver, I said I like when you call me. I like talking to you. It’s usually the best part of my day. Or night,” he added with a dry chuckle. “All these things you’re talking about… I’m the same. I have Joanie and the others, but they… they don’t understand. And sometimes when they’re really trying their hardest, that’s when it hurts the most. They’ll never understand. So I feel lonely. And… lots of other things. And I used to use the scotch when I had those feelings. I still want to sometimes. But sometimes I’m in the middle of that pull and then you text me and I feel grounded. I know we haven’t even actually talked about Tier 5–”
“And I don’t want to.” Oliver barely whispered it. His voice was hoarse. Mark determinedly kept looking at his hands.
“So we won’t. That’s okay. I was just going to say that we don’t need to. Maybe at some point, but right now it’s good to have someone who knows even if I don’t say it.”
Oliver hummed in understanding.
Mark chanced a glance upward. Oliver had slumped back, sinking into the couch, and his glasses were fully on top of his head now. His eyes were brimming with tears but his mouth was set firmly. He was playing with a thread on the arm of the couch. Eventually he looked over to meet Mark’s gaze.
“Well…” he said. “I still owe you an apology. I want to… I want to be a better friend to you. I, um… I… thanks for saying all those things you just said.”
They looked at each other, the moment stretching out for a while. Oliver blinked and pursed his lips together. Then, “Byron,” fell from his lips and his head dropped back into his hands, his shoulders shaking, and his voice fading.
“Hey, I’m here,” Mark soothed, moving closer, but pushing down the urge to put a hand on Oliver’s knee.
“I’m just so tired.”
Mark nodded, but realized Oliver couldn’t see him. He couldn’t think of what to say. He couldn’t tell Oliver it was going to be okay, not really. Mark felt himself drowning in all the wrong things to say.
“Could you… Could you sit with me?” Oliver asked, words a little muffled from behind his hands.
Mark stared at Oliver for a second. Then his body was moving before his brain caught up. He rose, carefully sliding between Oliver’s legs and the coffee table, and settled onto the couch. He kept his eyes on Oliver, looking for any sign of a misstep. But Oliver leaned into Mark, his tears blotting on Mark’s t-shirt. He inhaled sharply and tensed for a moment. “Is this okay?”
Mark nodded, then forced himself to answer out loud. “Yeah, it is. Is this?” He put his arm over Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver nodded and let the emotions go, sobs wracking his body. Mark didn’t ask questions. He didn’t talk at all. He hoped some day they could do that, but this day was about being physically present for his friend. He gently rubbed Oliver’s shoulders and let him cry until there was nothing left.
At some point Oliver fell asleep. At some point his phone died from playing music to a silent speaker. At some point the speaker turned itself off, the gentle chirp stirred Mark out of own drowsiness. His own phone was on the coffee table, out of reach. Judging from the lighting outside, it was late afternoon. Mark closed his eyes.
He thought about how he would do absolutely anything for the man asleep on his shoulder. He wanted to take care of Oliver, wanted it so much it scared him a little. He just hoped Oliver would allow him and maybe they could figure out how to take care of each other.